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Successful farm business managers must understand the determinants of profitability and have an overall long‐term or strategic management focus. The objective of this research was to explore the use of an e‐learning tool to help producers understand the impacts of different production, pricing, cost control, and investment decisions on their farm’s financial performance. This objective was accomplished by developing and testing a computer‐based training and application tool to facilitate determination of the financial health of farm businesses using the DuPont profitability analysis model. The results of the two experiments indicate that the computer software was effective for teaching techniques of profitability analysis contained within the DuPont model.

According to independently developed hypotheses by Michael Darby (1975) and Martin Feldstein (1976) nominal interest rates will increase during an inflationary period by an amount which is greater than the expected rate of inflation. This occurs in order to compensate lenders for the expected loss of principal and for the taxation of the interest earned. While many authors comment on the plausibility of the Darby‐Feldstein effect, it has been difficult to support this hypotheses empirically.

The existence of a stable relation between the demand for real cash balances and some few variables relating it to real economic activity is one of the cornerstones of the monetarist approach. Such a relation permits us not only to analyze the impact of monetary change on economic activity but, since it is stable, it also has important predictive content. A better insight is then possible on the analysis of the effects of monetary policy. On this basis, it has been shown that money really matters and that the money supply is, with regard to economic stability, a powerful but also a dangerous weapon when heedlessly used by governments.

This review aims to examine how photography and video have been used in a variety of fields.

The paper examines how these visual methods have and can be used in marketing.

Photography and video have important strengths. They help us overcome the typically fleeting nature of observation. They also allow us to record behavior in its situational context, allow for reflection, informants, coding, and use of the behavior or situation for illustration. In addition to their analysis of behavior, visual methods can also be used for the purpose of analysis of environments. Photographs and videos can also reveal insights into the interpretive side of the equation – examining people's focus and interpretation of their behaviors and rituals. This visual information can be qualitative – aiming for naturalistic, descriptive, and “rich” data; they can also be used to quantitatively measure circumstances and events.

Understanding the potential uses of photography and video in observational research as well as their strengths and weaknesses will allow us to gain the most value from their application.

This paper reexamines the relationship between budget deficits and exchange rates by applying Hakkio’s (1996) model to seven Asian countries and eight Euro‐currency countries over the years from 1951 to 2001. Applying the Time‐Series Cross‐Section Regression with the Seemingly Unrelated Regression approach to data from 15 countries, the results indicate that because of the indirect effect of the expected inflation rate, the risk premium, and the expected return rate, currency values are inversely related to budget deficits. However, the empirical results also present evidence supporting the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition that there is no direct effect of budget deficits on exchange rates.

Terrorism, an important component of Political risk as a possible determinant of ADRs (American Depository Receipts) returns have received little attention in academic literature. To address this issue and examine whether political risk is a major determinant of ADR returns of emerging market countries, this paper empirically examines market valuation of Indian ADRs around acts of terrorism. Using a sample of 52 such events in the sample period Jan 2003‐Dec 2003 we empirically analyze returns of Indian ADRs. The results from our study indicate a marginally negative significant effect, failing to indicate that event of terrorist attacks severely affect the Indian ADRs listed on the US stock market. This may be explained by a combined effect of; (a) the optimism of US investors towards emerging markets, and (b) market participants becoming more resilient and making informed choices around the “general” events of terrorism.

The study of psychological anthropology represents the interworkings of the theories, concepts, empirical findings, and methodologies of psychology and anthropology. This discussion of resources is written from the point of view of an anthropologist, not a psychologist. The psychologists have a related, though not identical, discipline called cross‐cultural psychology. As no scholar nor group of scholars can afford to live in a void, we find the works of members of both disciplines appearing in the same publications. This fact will be evident in the description of resources to follow.

Melvin Seeman (1989) has recently stated that nowadays the concept of alienation carries an antiquated meaning which is quite in contrast to its importance in the 1960s. There seems to be much evidence for a fading romance with alienation in the social sciences. I have continued Seeman's search for articles that have appeared between 1978 and 1982 in leading social science journals until 1989. There was only one major reference, however, a quite important one by Kai T. Erikson in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association in 1985. Contrary to these disappointing observations Seeman suggests that alienation is leading an underground life in contemporary research and theory. According to his assessment this theme survives because the assumptions involved in the tradition of the alienation motif are indispensable for critical analysis in sociology and psychology.

Before providing an overview of the conference with the above title and this Special Issue, this paper aims to present a view of the meaning of systemic risk, factors that affect systemic risk and measures of systemic risk. Thereafter, the conference presentations and the papers in this issue are summarized.

Characteristics and measures of systemic risk are reviewed. Conference papers and presentations are summarized.

While some aspects of systemic risk of a financial institution can be measured, an important aspect associated with contagion through markets is not easily captured by simple measures.

The conference and the papers in this issue contribute to the policy debate about sources and characteristics of systemic risk.

Economists usually try to avoid making moral judgements, at least in their professional capacity. Positive economics is seen as a way of analysing economic problems, in as scientific a manner as is possible in human sciences. Economists are often reluctant to be prescriptive, most seeing their task as presenting information on the various options, but leaving the final choice, to the political decision taker. The view of many economists is that politicians can be held responsible for the morality of their actions when making decisions on economic matters, unlike unelected economic advisors, and therefore the latter should limit their role.